yanni

I had major problems with tennis ellbow over the last couple of month. Used the "Corona" break to solve this issue and pretty much rested over the winter. I thought I was more or less pain free now. But when I started hitting golf balls the pain came back after hitting 25 balls (have to use a mat at the moment but this is soon going to change). What I was noticing is the insane amount of vibration when not hitting the ball in the sweetspot. I am using graphite shafts with the Cobra F9 (one length) already. My pro was handing me some Callaway Big Bertha (B21) irons for a test and those felt completely different. Way less vibrations. Also graphite shafts. I am not sure where those vibrations come from ? The Callaways are ultra forgiving irons with big offset. The head felt a bit heavier than the ones on the cobra. But I am not sure if the head could be the reason? Or if it could be the shaft ? I am thinking about trying out some other clubs to solve part of the problem. I am quite happy with the one length concept tough at the moment. When I hit the sweetspot with the Cobra it feels good, if not it's just terrible. There seems to be nothing in between. With the Callaway I had the impression I really could feel what kind of mishits I was producing. There were many nuances between a very good and very bad shot. I think the F9 is a game improvement iron and the Big Bertha a super game improvement iron? So theoretically the F9 should feel better ? But it somehow does not. In the end it also could be the resonance frequency of the shafts ? I am not really sure about that ? BTW. I hit the Callway at least 15 yards further than the Cobra. Same loft. That was quite surprising for me.

What kind of distance gaps would expect if you compare a soft ball with mid and hard compression balls. At 90mph swingspeed for example ?

I just got fitted for Ping G400 LST driver with 11 degrees of loft. The fitter measured 90mph and told me I was hitting up on the ball what he liked a lot. My best strike was around 220 yards (carry) which I think equals my speed. I took the new driver to the course and was totally underwhelmed. I was carrying less then with my old cobra driver. Not more than 200yards. Most of the time much less. Went to the range today and hit some balls. Hit them around 190 yards. But those were yellow range balls. I measured around 90-100mph with my swing speed radar. But I am not sure if this is correct. Somebody said I should add something like 10% the range balls. This equals to 210 yards carry which should be all right. Just for fun I hit some of my "real" balls. They actually went shorter (!) than the range balls which brings me to the question if those balls could rob my distance? In the past I bought good quality Bridgestone e6 lakeballs which were recommended. This time a bought mixed bag of all kinds of balls which were quite a lot cheaper (but from the same shop). They also look more beaten up. Could it be the lake balls that make a dramatic difference ? I am not talking about a slight difference. But something like 15-20 yards ? I think its not about lake balls vs new balls since the difference should be quite small but about different brands of balls ?

I practised chipping a lot recently. I try to shoot the ball near the beginning of the green so it rolls as much as possible. This works quite nicely. I practise distances from around 5m-10m with different clubs. We have just a chipping and no pitching green for practising at the moment. Today on the course I had to do some shots from around 10m-25m. I was using my 50 and 54 wedge. I tried to do the same. But when playing this distance the ball just stopped on the green and rolled maybe for 1m or even less. In this case my concept did not work anymore. Does this come from bigger swing speed on the longer shots which adds more backspin? I would describe the my 5m-10m chip shots as 10% of my max power. The longer 10-20m shots maybe around 20-%-30% of my power. So still not a very high swing speed and just a quarter swing.

I had a chance to try out the wedges today (just chipping) First I had to get used to them cause they went a little bit further then my Cobra sandwedge. But once I got used to them I had way better results than with the Cobra. The weight difference in the SW is actually 450g compared to the 400g on the Cobra. The slightly higher weight made me swing more consistent. Also the shorter size seemed to help a bit. Once I got used to it a had way better contact and spin. I just felt much more comfortable with those than with the Cobra. Just from looking down the club and swinging it gave much more confidence. Cannot really explain why. I am not 100% sure how this will turn out on the long run but I think I will keep them for now eventhough it might not be a perfect fit.

I agree with that. Also I don't really feel I need this additional wedge. I am just reading this in some books and see this in other players bags. Most people use either 3-4 wedges. I use 2 at the moment.

The cobra GW would indeed be 50. I am still a beginner and my short game is far from being perfect. Probably this option would be best for now. I thought the Clevelands would do something "better". But this is probably not really the case. I will test them this evening and see how it goes. The F7 series is not available anymore though. Have to check the used market.

I am playing a set of graphite Cobra F7 irons right now (1/2" longer than standard) The set contains a PW and SW. The PW has 45 and the SW 55 of loft. I was thinking to add a gap wedge and also had the impression I should buy dedicated wedges. So what I did is ordered some used Cleveland CBX wedges GW in 50, and SW in 54 loft. I am thinking of adding some lob wedge 58" later. I will keep the PW from my Cobra set. What I notice is the Cleveland wedges are a bit shorter (which should be OK) but I also way more heavy with their steel shafts then the other clubs. I still could return the Clevelands. Do you think this could be general problem and I would be better of by adding an original Cobra F7 carbon gap wedge to my set ? A different option would to just add 2 wedges. 52 and 58. Not really sure what to do 😉

If you watch the pros I don't have the feeling there are super relaxed. Even the lady golfers seem to be very athletic and I have some tension in their body. I think this tension is really needed to get a stable posture. Still their swing ist very fluent. I think the thing is certain parts of the body have to be relaxed others not. In my experience shoulders, hips, wrist and arms should be relaxed. Core and hands should not be totally relaxed.

Thanks. I tried going the youtube and internet advice route. Did not work at all. Lead to errors instead of solving them. Took regular lessons now in which we got rid of everything I teached myself wrong. I did everything me teacher taught me and still was casting. The last element was the grip. My pro told me 90% of his students grip too tight so he never thought about I could grip to loose. I found this out myself just trying different things. The problem is solved now. And make very clean contact and gained tons of distance. We also use video every time so I can clearly see its finally solved. My thread was not so much about "How I can solve casting" it was more about sharing my experience. The idea with posting videos is still a very good advice. This describes what I do right now and it works. My wrist and forearm are quite loose. But my hands are much stronger compared to before. This also gives me way more control. I actually found this out by doing very small and slow swings. But note compared to others my pressure is probably still weak. Just for myself it feels very strong. What I learned now that words do hardly translate to the real feel.

Yes this is what I did. And this way more firm than what I was used to.

Understand. I was trying to leave everything as loose as possible. But this was leading to a lot inconsistency and loss of power I think.

I think this is what the coach meant when he said you could get more power from a firmer body. I will try that. To sum it up 1) Hands tight (at least for me it feels tight) 2) Abs tight. 3) Rest relaxed

Yes that's a basic problem in golf. Words do not really help as the feel is totally different between players. For Ben Hogan his light grip would be a very strong grip for me.

I tried everything to get rid of my casting. My club head speed with an 7 iron was around 70mph. I tried everything the coach recommended. Nothing really helped. I could accelerate up to 75mph what this was not consistent at all. I had absolutely no control with that kind of speed. You know this advice "hold your club as you would hold a bird". To me this meant holding the club as light as possible. On a scale of 1-10 probably around 2. Just as much the club does not fly away. Everybody was telling me I should swing very relaxed and loose. When Hogan says something like that he probably has much stronger hands than me anyway. So when he holds a bird this means something very different for him than for me. Now look at the pros. Is Tiger loose? Not really in my opinion. He seems to have a very strong athletic position. But he swings very fluently. What I did now is to change my grip pressure to something like 5-6 on a scale form 0-10. This solved the following problems 1) With the old loose grip I could not hold the lag cause the club just dropped on his own. This lead to an early release and casting. I could do whatever I wanted but the club released too early on its own on the way down. 2) My fastest swing is 84mph now! The more relaxed ones around 78mph without a lot of effort. 3) Probably everything is more consistent now. I could not test this on the range yet though. Some trainer (not mine) also gave the advice to be really strong (tense) (!) in your body to create speed? To me this is quite the opposite of what most people say. I tried this also but did not gain additional speed. Interestingly enough I did not loose any speed though ! Did anybody experience something similar?

I am pretty sure it comes down to my swing in the end and I cannot blame the 5 iron. I will take a pro lesson and asking about the 5 iron. Still curious about the the 5 hybrid though.

I am playing graphite shafts. Still I am curious what changing shafts would mean on this 5 iron?

Was on the range today practising. I was hitting my 7 iron very solidly. I also hit my 6 iron quite well around 5-10 yards further which is OK. I had trouble with my 5 iron though. Ball flight was much lower than with the 6 and not longer than the 6. I also got some mishits. I checked the lofts of my Cobra F7 irons and I think this may explain something. 3 18° 4 20° 5 23° 6 26° 7 30° 8 35° 9 40° PW 45° GW 50° SW 55° If you compare those values to those values you will see quite a lot of difference. (I also checked out Taylor Made and those clubs have even less loft than this) http://murdofrazer.com/golf-equipment/golf-clubs/golf-club-angles-and-distances I think what they sell as a 5 iron would have been a 4 or even 3 iron in the past ! The 3 iron would even have been a 1 iron ! So I think I am not hitting a 5 iron here but at least a 4 iron. I also carry a 21.5 Hybrid which goes way longer and higher than my 5 iron which I hit it quite well. This would be like a 4 iron in this set. A 23 Hybrid could replace my 5 iron (which is actually more like a 4 iron) but I am afraid the gap to the 6 iron could be too big. What I also realize now that my 8 iron (which I hardly use) is more like an 7 iron. So I probably should use and practise this more. Can anybody comment about those lofts? I am kind of confused since all those general "laws" like ball position etc. which is true for short, middle and long irons somehow shift with sets like this. (I feel a little bit better now about not hitting the iron 5 as a beginner ;) )

Thats very interesting. My iron6 max swing speed (without hitting the ball) is around 85mph. When hitting the ball probably around 75mph average. My driver max speed is around 95mph Average when hitting the ball probably around 85-90 mph. My rollout distance with the driver is around 180-190 yards. So this is WAY less than your distance. This for sure has to do with not hitting the sweetspot every time. I am really curious how you can hit that far with your swing speed.

At the same time I am thinking my there is some kind of PC Software I could run on my notebook and just use an USB cam ?

My pro uses some video system with 2 cameras where I can view my swing on some monitor where also a swing plane. Cameras track from behind and the side. When doing lessons with him he tells me to slowly follow the plane sometimes. This and seeing myself on the screen helps a lot with everything. After some time my body seems to forget this plane and other stuff. I was wondering if there is an app for the iphone that does the same? I know there are many apps which can record. But I am not sure if there apps which show a live view where you can draw a swing plane ? My idea is to send the video information to apple TV and finally to a TV screen. Theoretically with 2 iphones and 2 screens you could even do a 2 cam setup. I think I found something which will do this. https://www.liveviewgolf.com/shop/ Looks great.

I talked to my pro about this. He confirmed I got a one plane swing. He told me his not forcing anybody in a plane. But he prefers using this plane for amateurs since he thinks its more easy to learn. So actually I use the plane I learned from him.

I did a recording of my swing yesterday with some golf swing analyzer app. The viewport was from behind so I could see the swing plane. After recording I was comparing my swing with some other players videos. In the videos I compared there were to lines. One for the backswing which was a lot steeper and one for the downswing that was more shallow. What I noticed with my swing that the downswing plane is very similar to the videos but the upswing plane is not at all. Actually my downswing is just a tiny bit flatter then my upswing and the upswing is very shallow compared to the other players. I really tried to change this but I could not do it at all. Then I realized there is actually a name for this kind of swing and other successfull golfers seem to use this. In my opinion if you don't know you swing like this it leads to some problems when following instructions. There was instructions like "On the downswing you have to swing from inside out and lower your plane and let your arms fall". I tried this again and again and it did not make any sense to me. Now I know I was already swinging on the correct plane. I don't have to do anything. This also explains I never had a big problems with slices and was always hitting pretty straight. But I had problems with good ball contact. I think the setup position for the one swing plane should be a little different from what I read. I just ordered a book which compares the two swing thoughts. Does anybody else seem to swing on a one plane ?

At what position do actually start accelerating ? I do it like that. 1) Hip / shoulder turn which drops the hands 2) When the shaft is parallel to the ground I start accelerating with my arms. I also tried using my left and right hands/wrists at the very last moment. But it seems I do not gain anything from this. The combination of hip, shoulder rotation and my arms seem to give me the most speed. Hip rotation ads something but I in my case the arms seem to be responsible for most of the speed. But I know I have stronger arms than core probably. So this might differ from person to person.